As I lay perfectly still next to you in the dark, after the sun dipped down too low for me to watch the rise and fall of your tiny chest in your colorful bunny PJs, I’m reassured by the soft snoring I hear. I don’t mind that it’s keeping me from sleep. The truth is, I’d be up anyway. Wondering, watching, waiting, praying.
My mind can’t help but replay the simple mantra we’ve taught you over the last few years, since you’ve learned to talk, and form thoughts, and carry out conversations with us about anything from detailed descriptions of what your favorite Monster Jam truck is and why, to your compelling arguments for chocolate doughnuts for dinner instead of whatever’s actually on the menu.
“What is Mommy and Daddy’s most important job in the world?” we ask.
“To keep me and my sister safe,” my son chimes back without hesitation, every time.
Usually, that’s followed up by a straightforward explanation for why the dangerous activity of the day should be avoided and the potential for harmful outcomes we’d like to prevent.
“So jumping on the couch with your baby sister/banging on the window/running in the house with a glass candle is probably not the best idea because…” we lead.
“We could get a boo-boo,” he reasons.
So why is my brain fumbling and failing to find an explanation for your seizure at the zoo?
It was the fourth one since you turned three. It’s four too many. It’s torment to watch, and it leaves me filled with vulnerable helplessness.
It’s Mommy’s job to keep you safe. So how do I grapple with the things I can’t prevent or protect you from?
Are there really things we give to God when there are no more second, third, or fourth opinions to reason and logic the worry away? The answer is yes. The answer is, of course. Putting that into practice is a lot harder.
Ask any medical professional, and they’ll knowingly nod their head as you recount the horror of seeing your baby in a catatonic state, lose consciousness completely, the light dimmed from their eyes and their body convulsing uncontrollably.
“They’ll outgrow it,” they will assure you. “It’s perfectly common and harmless.”
The pediatrician. The pediatric neurologist. Google. Reddit threads.
As if that makes it all better.
Ask any mother who has witnessed her child in this state, and she’ll soften her gaze in tender understanding. You can see bits of empathy gathering at the corners of her eyes, the corners of her lips forming a frown. You’ll see her shoulders slope slightly, the physical exhale of a shared fear released sitting in the space between you.
“It’s the worst feeling in the world,” she’ll tell you. “When you watch your baby suffer and there’s nothing you can do to fix it.”
Time has rolled on since your first episode, the memory of which is seared into my brain. You were so tiny, and we were across the country, visiting one of my oldest friends. We had gone for a hike in the mountains of Colorado. Your seizure lasted less than a minute, but it felt like an hour. An ambulance ride in an unfamiliar city, so many miles from home, felt like the perfect storm atop an already vivid nightmare.
Years have passed since then. Many doctors’ appointments. Neurological tests. Questions, answers, and more questions. And somewhere along the way, we’ve learned that not every seizure is the same. Your medical team feels confident that what you’ve experienced are febrile seizures, convulsions triggered by a fever in young children, rather than epilepsy, which involves an ongoing tendency toward unprovoked seizures.
We’ve learned that febrile seizures typically occur between six months and five years of age, peaking around 18 months. Five. That number has become its own kind of finish line in my mind. An invisible threshold I’m waiting to cross, as if your fifth birthday will somehow usher in a new season of motherhood, one where I can stop bracing myself for the next fever, the next common cold that turns into something more.
As you learn and grow in your first year of Pre-K, and I watch you stumble, and mess up, and thrive, see the pride spread across your face when you get a “good” report for the day from your teacher, I beam.
At the challenges and uncertainties we’ve navigated together.
I anxiously await that invisible safety blanket I imagine will cloak me when you turn five. As if there’s some imaginary threshold we’ll cross together and we’ll no longer fear and dread a common cold or a spike in a fever. As if I’ll finally be able to exhale.
But until then, there’s the knowing.
The lurking, unspoken worry that hovers beneath the glances Daddy and I shoot at one another when you’re sick. The quick exchange that says everything without saying anything at all. The mental calculations. How high is the fever? How long has it been? Is he acting like himself?
I still feel a sick pang of worry wash over me when you get a fever. School germs have a way of being stronger and more relentless than anything we’ve experienced so far. And just this past month, you were sick twice, leading to multiple missed days and sleepless nights.
But now I can breathe you in, snuggle you close in the curve of my hips, a cool washcloth pressed against your tiny head. I can pray, and give it to God, and trust that you will be okay.